Historical Context
By
1923 (the year in which the novel is set), World War I had been over for five
years. The horror of the War still haunted the national psyche as an unresolved
trauma, even as England tried to
bury its memory and move on, in order to catch up with the rest of the world,
which was speeding headlong into modernity. For some, it was an exciting,
promising time. London buzzed with airplanes, motorcars, commerce, and the
barely-contained exuberance of young people focused not on the past but on the
present and future. A few industries were growing; the upper classes were still
rich, and some segments of the working class were enjoying higher wages and
better conditions than before the War. Women had more rights and freedoms; it
was even possible for a young woman (such as Elizabeth Dalloway) to imagine a
career in government for herself. There had been many exciting developments in
art, music, and literature: Cubism, Jazz, Modernism, and other movements had
administered a series of shocks from which traditional English culture was still
reeling and recoiling, and new shocks were on the way (Woolf’s novel would be
one). Developments in psychology, anthropology, physics, and other fields had
animated many artists, scientists, politicians, and social activists with a
sense of urgency, with a conviction that they were uniquely positioned to
revitalize, transform, and revolutionize society and the world.
At the same time, trouble lurked on the horizon. There had been full
employment in England during the War, but afterwards, as the war machine was
dismantled, as immigration increased, and as thousands of veterans returned from
foreign parts broken in body and mind, unemployment began to rise. Though few
knew it, the country was heading toward the deep depression, massive
unemployment, food shortages, epidemics, and profound social unrest that for the
next 15 years would make life miserable for the lower classes and that would
contribute, eventually, to the causal chain that led England into World War II.
Other troubles were on the horizon as well. By the end of 1923, Mussolini had
already turned Italy into a Fascist state, Hitler had emerged on the political
scene in Germany, and the British Empire was beginning to disintegrate, as its
various colonies intensified their struggles to throw off British rule. Civil
War in Ireland had already led to the establishment of the Irish Free State, for
example, and Ghandi had begun his campaign for independence in India. Woolf’s
novel makes few direct references to these events, but signs of trouble
occasionally¾and
pointedly¾break
through the bubble of security surrounding Clarissa and her set: a group of
young boys in uniform march lockstep through the park; a vagrant woman’s song
stirs Peter to pity, another female vagrant discomfits Richard, Doris Kilman’s
poverty rebukes Clarissa, a shell-shocked veteran (Septimus) haunts the city,
and his suicide interrupts Clarissa’s party. We get intimations, too, that
Peter, as a member of the British ruling class in India, has played some role in
his government’s repression of the independence movement there. In some ways,
Woolf’s novel is about, or at least recreates, the unstable mixture of
breathless optimism and paralytic fear that characterized her time.
